Publisher: Bethesda Softworks

Developer: Bethesda GS

Release Date: 5/5/2009

Available On

Now that the third (but most certainly not final) DLC is out, we get the best of the bunch. Broken Steel adds an extremely hard quest, a level 30 cap raise, new powerful foes, and one mean Tesla Cannon. I also highly recommend, if you haven’t bought any DLC yet, buying BS first because it picks up two weeks after the “Project Purity” quest when the game initially ended.

This quest, of course, is for the Brotherhood of Steel, and you must help cut off the rest of the Enclave forces by blowing up a radio control tower that they are using at the Air Force Base, which is a whole new location. Before you do this, however, you must steal a Tesla Coil for the Scribes (they are scavenging Enclave tech after all), and you get a brand new awesome Tesla Cannon that is probably the most powerful weapon in the game now. This thing will kill almost anything in one to a few hits, and after impact, the electricity keeps eating away at health. This thing will also take out vertibirds in one fell swoop. Yes!!! Thankfully, it uses EC cells and not special ammo, so there’s plenty of it.

Walking around these two new locations is actually extremely tough, so just make sure you’re at least level 25–30 before even attempting it because you have Hellfire Enclave and new Ghouls that take forever to kill. Make sure you take a good 30–50 stimpaks with you because you’re going to get hammered in probably the most enemy-populated area in the game. When Bethesda said harder quests and enemies, they meant it. Now, this doesn’t mean the DLC is impossible to beat; it’s just extremely challenging.

There is also one other side quest they go through in there called “Aqua Pura,” and this is located at the Ghoul hideout in the Museum of History for those of you who want to know. Now there’s no interesting, unique atmosphere like The Pitt, so it’s just like what’s on the disc, except with new locations. I highly recommend players pick up Broken Steel, especially for the level cap raise and the new perks. The only problem is that this DLC is still too short, with about 4-6 hours of play, but the level cap raise makes up for it.

Reviewed On